April the 18th, 2024 – President Zoran Milanović has finally spoken following the Croatian elections yesterday after a rather uncharacteristic silence.
As Index vijesti writes, the president has finally taken to social media, stating the following:
“I’d like to thank all of you, the Croatian people, who voted for the Croatian Parliament on Wednesday. By setting the election date for Wednesday, April the 17th, I wanted to encourage you to vote in as large a number as possible, because I believed and still believe that the decision about the future of our homeland must be in your hands. The large turnout confirmed that the Croatian people love this country, that they believe in it and that they want change.
The parties that firmly stood on the side of the fight against corruption, that don’t want Croatia to be trapped by corruption, crime and inequality before the law, received two thirds of your votes. Your votes are binding. You have the right to expect all of us whom you have chosen – to keep our word. Without it, we cease to be a democratic society, and politics is reduced to trade and to taking care only of our own interests. The Croatian Constitution is clear: the mandate to form a new government can only be given to a person who proves that they enjoys the support of 76 representatives elected to the Croatian Parliament.
Discussions on the creation of a new parliamentary majority are ongoing, and everyone who participates in these discussions must take into account the will of the people expressed in the Croatian elections. Just like before, in this situation I will stick to the spirit of the Croatian Constitution, and to what it prescribes, to the very end,” wrote Zoran Milanović on Facebook after considerable silence during the Croatian elections.
Milanović, who was a covert prime ministerial candidate of the SDP’s Rijeke Pravde (Rivers of Justice) coalition, is still the president of the country. To briefly recap, the HDZ coalition managed to get 61 mandates, while Rijeke Pravde got 42 mandates. Although Milanović said throughout the campaign that he has a cunning plan to gather the 76 hands needed to form a government, it will be extremely difficult to do so in this situation.
Theoretically, this is still possible, but with huge compromises and the merging of practically incompatible ideological rivals.
